EDITORIAL: Speak up! The NSA is listening

For the past week, news of government snooping has roiled the Washington press. We’ve learned that the National Security Agency is collecting Americans’ phone records and scouring the audio, video, email and Internet usage of foreign nationals overseas, all in the hope of halting terrorism. Critics say the surveillance goes too far and everyone’s privacy is at risk.
Time for the Daily News to say: We told you so.
This NSA “data mining” began under President George W. Bush. We objected to it seven years ago.
“There are several problems here,” we wrote in a May 2006 editorial. “The first is that it is probably illegal for the NSA … to collect this data in secret. In addition to the NSA charter, the Communications Act, first passed in 1934, has privacy provisions that seem clear: Phone companies are not allowed to share data about customer calling habits unless presented with a warrant. … Second is that the program most likely is useless when it comes to detecting terrorism.”
We explained that data mining can detect common patterns in private communications, but there’s nothing common about terrorist acts.
“Even aside from the privacy concerns — and they are serious — the NSA’s compiling of phone records looks like an enormous waste of time and taxpayers’ money,” we concluded. “It should be ended immediately.”
Our objections angered some readers. Callers and letter writers argued that fighting terrorism was Job No. 1 and loss of privacy was a small price to pay for security. Besides, they said, if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear.
We kept at it anyway. In an August 2007 editorial, we said NSA surveillance was “another step toward a world in which government operates in secrecy. … Some civil liberties groups have lambasted Democrats for weakness in caving to the president on this issue. An even less attractive reason might be that the Democrats hope to control the executive branch soon, and look forward to having a reservoir of unaccountable power.”
And that’s exactly what happened.